


Moments Out Of Time

by A_Damned_Scientist



Category: Farscape
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-24 00:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15618711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Damned_Scientist/pseuds/A_Damned_Scientist
Summary: Some things are not always as they seem, and jealousy can allow secrets to fester.





	Moments Out Of Time

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for my own SC100 on Terra Firma. In line with the challenge, this is a future fic. Warning, some low level smut, some higher level angst.
> 
> Not mine and no money made.
> 
> Thanks: Vinegardog for the beta read, especially for the reassurance that it was fine as it was and didn’t need padding out to something ten times as long.

_100 Arns_  
  
“Hey baby,” John growled as he pressed Aeryn between two of Moya’s golden ribs. She squirmed in a manner bound to up the ante and returned his goofy grin with a more enigmatic half-smile. All of this served to ratchet up his levels of excitement by another notch.  
  
Encouraged to take things further, he kissed her eyebrows, causing her to gasp, roll her eyes and quiver like a jelly. He took advantage of her breathless discombobulation by running the tip of his nose along the soft, sensitive skin behind her ear. “Chi’s got the sprout. Let’s make another baby!”  
  
Aeryn didn’t reply, at least not verbally, but she slid her long fingers into the short hair at the nape of his neck and, almost as firmly as his body was pinioning hers, manoeuvred his head around the line of her cheek until she could crush his lips to her own.  
  
John took that as a ‘Yes, let’s.’  
  
 _100 Days_  
  
“He’s got your nose,” John teased as he played with his gurgling baby son, Deke, while Aeryn tried to read one of the books she had brought from Earth: “In Search Of Schrodinger’s Cat”. It had been given as a present by Olivia, who had purloined it from the dusty and abandoned back of her brother’s bookshelf.  
  
Aeryn snorted non-committally, sparing half an indulgent eye and half a smile for her husband and son.  
  
“But he’s got my eyes,” John continued. Aeryn arched an eyebrow at that. She paused her literary, scientific and philosophical expedition in order to send a long, quizzical stare their way.  
  
It was a scene so different from anything she had imagined for her life up until just a short while ago. John sat casually on the floor, Deke laying atop a red blanket beside him. Both were lightly silhouetted against the starscape which shone through the canopy of the terrace. She could feel her breathing hitching slightly, knew that her brow and lips must be betraying some emotion.  As she struggled to master her inner turmoil she breathed a grateful sigh to the Goddess that John was too fixated with Deke to notice.  
  
Some boxes were perhaps best left unopened.  
  
 _100 Weekens_  
  
“I don’t understand why you don’t even want to talk about it!” John was angry, but so was she. Angry and defensive. Why couldn’t the fekkik just let it drop?  
  
“And I don’t understand why you cannot just accept that things are the way they are,” she snarled back, hating herself for not controlling her emotions better. She didn’t want this argument. Would have given anything to know how to defuse it. But she just couldn’t seem to help herself, couldn’t seem to help making matters worse. “We tried for another baby. It never happened. Maybe we just got lucky with Deke?”  
  
“We could get lucky again!”  
  
“Or not! Maybe you fried our gametes on Katratzi?” She blurted out, instantly regretting her words.  
  
“Or maybe...” he sneered. “You just don’t want to contaminate your precious bloodline with my deficient genes!”  So, it was one of those rows, was it? She didn’t want to go there, but the red mist descended. Well, if he wanted to play it like that, then...  
  
“Maybe....” Before she could lash out further, verbally or physically, John turned and stomped out of their quarters. She knew he must know how much his words had hurt her. But he also seemed to know her well enough to realise it was time for him to go, before her righteous anger vented itself on him.  
  
“CRICHTON!” she hollered after him, half in rage, half in genuine distress.  
  
Well, one thing was sure: he’d be sleeping in one of the spare cells tonight. She didn’t have to put up with him being that much of a drannit, no matter what truths she might be keeping from him.  
  
 _100 Monens_  
  
John would never have found out the truth if Aeryn hadn’t been away on business when Deke had fallen ill with dermafolica. Whether that was a good or a bad thing he never could quite decide, even decades after the truth was out of the box.  
  
“Mr Crouton, let me help you to understand,” The Interion doctor told him in a condescending tone that reminded John of pretty much every Interion he had ever met and a fair proportion of doctors, too, of any species. “It is a serious disease but we caught it in time: Your son will make a full recovery. He has excellent genes, pureblood Sebacean. And although that made him extra-susceptible, it also granted him remarkable recuperative powers.”  
  
“You, you...  say that again?” John struggled to process the doctor’s words. “Pureblood Sebacean?  
  
“Indeed Mr...” The doctor consulted his notes for John’s assumed identity. “... Cretin.” Words continued to flow from the medic’s mouth but John scarcely processed them. He could feel the rush of blood pounding in his ears, his vision narrowing. Deke was better. But...  
  
Pure blood Sebacean? That could only mean that he was not the father. Why hadn’t she told him? Did she even know? It had been a chaotic time. She had been captured, tortured, under a lot of pressure. Surely she knew? Was that why she didn’t want a second child? Could they even have kids? But what about the kiss test? Whose child was it, even?  
  
It’s yours, you idiot, a small voice at the back of his mind told him. Now shut up and deal with it.  
  
Should he tell her? Confront her? What if she didn’t know? What would it achieve anyway?  
  
In all of the myriad of thoughts that disturbed his every moment until Aeryn returned, happy, smiling, and very much with eyes plainly only for him and for Deke, he never once considered the possibility that Aeryn may not have been the mother, either.  
  
 _100 Cycles_  
  
“We raised a good un’, babe,” John’s age-lined eyes smiled as he and Aeryn stood to applaud D’Argo Sun Crichton as he was called to the stage to receive the prestigious Noxon Prize for Philosophical Physics from the Interion Academy. “I couldn’t be more proud even if he were all mine.”  
  
Aeryn stopped mid clap and, jaw as slack as her brow was furrowed, turned her head to stare at her aged husband. She still couldn’t decide whether to be sad that the years had aged him so much, or grateful that Sebacean and Interion medical science had done so much to hold back those years for him. On occasion he had confided to her that he had already lived way beyond the natural human life span.  
  
“It’s OK, babe, I’ve known for...  I dunno... a long time.” He sighed and tried to force the best smile he could manage from his care-worn and wrinkled visage.  
  
Aeryn recovered quickly, sighing and shaking her head. “John, you don’t understan...”  
  
“I just wish you’d have been honest with me,” he blundered on in ignorance. “He was your kid, I’d have loved...”  
  
“I also couldn’t have loved him more even if he were mine.”  John had always been difficult, had always had his moods, his sulks, not least when it had come to the subject of offspring. But this was a mystery she could no longer hide.  
  
Her calmly delivered words stopped him dead in his smug tracks. She could see the confusion, see his mouth working like that of a fish as he struggled to process what she had said. She helped him out. There didn’t now seem to be any point in trying to force the mystery back into the box which had contained it all these cycles. “John, we could never have children.”  
  
“Rubbish!” he blustered. “What about the kiss test! What about Katralla! What about...?”  
  
“OK, so maybe not never, John. But that was all before the Scarrans captured me, before Katratzi.”  
  
“I...  don’t...” he floundered as Deke reached the stage.  
  
“The Scarrans killed our child. And made me infertile.” As Aeryn began to explain, she finally realised how the passing cycles had finally made it possible for them to have this conversation, at least without them both ending in pieces. “I couldn’t... I couldn’t risk... I couldn’t have you know. You’d have done something too terrible.” He’d have probably destroyed the Scarrans, and in doing so the core of the gentle man she loved. “So I volunteered to carry another pilot’s child, on the carrier.”  
  
Aeryn had known how important offspring were to him, so when she had gone to the surgeon on the command carrier, all those cycles ago, and discovered that the foetus fathered by him – by his twin - had been poisoned by the Scarrans, just as they had poisoned all future conceptions she might manage, she had had to think fast.  A surrogate pregnancy was the way to go: There was always a surplus of foetuses, from fertilised high-value combat officers who could not be spared from duty: Prowler pilots, for instance. The surgeon had looked at her in confusion and surprise when she had offered to bear such a child. The he had shrugged, asked her to fill in the forms and performed the transfer.  
  
John slowly nodded as he seemed to internalise her story, match it to what he knew, found it made some sense. The years had truly mellowed him, she reflected. On the stage a pompous Interion was outlining why the academy had awarded their coveted prize to a mere sebacean, and a half-primitive one at that. Neither John nor Aeryn paid it heed, only registering Deke’s quiet dignity as he waited for the man to finish. Finally John reached out to her, took her hand, squeezed it. A tear nestled in the corner of his rheumy eye, matching that which she knew hung in the corner of her own.  
  
“But we coulda had another... the royal planet... we coulda?” He stumbled as the applause subsided.  
  
“No John, not after Katratzi. Don’t you understand? Your bomb finished the job that the Scarrans started. After that neither of us were having any children.” She forced a smile and squeezed his hand back, careful not apply too much pressure and damage his elderly flesh with her much stronger grip. “We were lucky Deke survived, really.”  
  
John fell silent, turning his face away from her and towards the podium, where Deke was now stepping forward, preparing to give his acceptance speech. Aeryn scoured her husband’s profile, searching for clues as to what he was thinking, how he had taken her revelations. Finally, without looking at her the corner of his lip curled up just a touch and he ran the thumb of his free hand across his chin, almost missing his bottom lip.  
  
“He’s a good lad, Aeryn. Got your nose. And my eyes. We did alright, I reckon.”  
  
“Yes, John,” she let out the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding for the last 100 cycles. “Yes, John, we did.”  
  
  
  
The end  
  



End file.
